GALLARIES: Solve this riddle and do the polka

Let’s see if we can solve a New Year mystery.

The wordly goods of an art dealer who ran a gallery in Nairobi arrived at her new home in the UK and triggered a puzzle she is still trying to solve.

Among the furniture and crates of African paintings that were her stock in trade was a 3ft by 5ft oil of what looks like a view of the Mediterranean or perhaps an Italian lake — and she has absolutely no idea how it got there.

Lavishly presented in a rich gold frame, the painting, reproduced here, looks rather syrupy to me, but it is certainly by a capable artist.

The loose handling of the table in the foreground and the tumbling flowers show confidence, and the drawing is sound.

The painting is signed Jameson. On the back is a name known only to the owner.

“It was just there in the container,” said art dealer Tosin Rotimi who used to run the Iroke gallery specialising in West African paintings, from her home off Loresho Ridge.

If it is your painting or you know who owns it — and how it ended up in a container that was sent to the West Country city of Bath — then Rotimi would be delighted to hear from you. And return it once ownership is verified.

Contact me and I’ll put you in touch.

From a painting whose attraction lies in its florid brushwork to an exhibition that projects minimalism.

This I suspect was an inevitable byproduct of the curator’s intention to offer a show tagged Affordable Art in nice time for the festive season.

Of the 50 or so works on show, the majority were of single figures — human and animal — or of other subjects stripped to their essentials.

Understandable enough, given a need to keep prices down, even though the gallery’s idea of what is affordable may differ from yours’ and mine (one painting at $2,700 for example).

But let us celebrate the reductive quality of some of the work and remember the maxim, “less is more.” Let us also remember Matisse and Picasso, the value of whose output would challenge the GDP of some small nations; yet both were artists who revelled in economy of expression.

This exhibition, at the newish Polka Dot Gallery at The Souk in Nairobi’s Karen neighbourhood, proved so popular it has been kept on for a few more weeks by owner Lara Ray.

And to be fair, some of the stuff on show is not only of good quality, demonstrating the acute observation needed to produce work that says a lot with a little, but also keenly priced.

A group of five postcard sized drawings of Kisumu by Mercy Kaggia, a Kenyan based in Germany, were on sale for a modest $20 apiece, while other larger drawings by this artist were marked at $40 a throw. Illustration rather than great art; nonetheless attractive and very well executed.

The $2,700 asking price was for a large painting of three lionesses at a watering hole, by Moira Earnshaw. Tautly posed and well composed… but affordable? Well, it was Karen after all, and what’s a few thousand dollars here or there?

Small landscapesby Caroline Mbirua were offered at $120 each, while for $300 or $400, depending on your pick, there were two incisive little flower studies by Sophie Walbeoffe. Portrait heads by Anne Mwiti — more linear than her recent outburst of painterly endeavour — caught the eye as did a ravishing etching of a hen by Oily Parish.

Patrick Kinuthia’s portrait of a young woman was more refined than usual — an expression realised with a minimum of strokes — while studies by others of single zebra, antelope and elephant abounded.

An awkward exception to the pared down look were Suki Darnbrough’s two female nudes seen from the back… solitary on their white grounds it is true, but stiff and rather awkward I thought. There was no indication of the soft amplitude of flesh you expect from a nude. Nudity, unlike nakedness, is another set of clothes, worn usually to titillate. (And for that definition, thank you John Berger, who so sadly left us early this year).

In this case, they failed.

Other exceptions to the minimalist theme but for entirely different reasons were Jjuuko Hoods’ bustling high street in Kampala, jammed with matatus, and his fellow Ugandan Ronald Kerango’s solitary weaver bird, perched on a matrix of collaged and painted pieces of newsprint.

Then there was that wonderfully wrought abstract by April Zhu, a Chinese living in Nairobi, its small white squares ticking across lilac and ochre colour fields, bound together by a shuddering cobalt line.

The trouble with abstract art is that its subject and purpose is usually better known to the artist than the viewer (the accessible Justus Kyalo being a welcome exception) and what we had from Zhu, without explanation, was a pattern. But it was a harmonious pattern, beautifully balanced both compositionally and tonally with an added twist of excitement in that line and the singing yellow borders.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, an arts consultancy based in Nairobi.